“He’s perfect,” the crooner said of his son’s health today. “The most important thing was to get [the tumor] out, with clean margins. Because if you do, it goes from being this scary thing to just being tremendous odds. No one likes talking about percentages but, honestly, [we have] a percentage where we can live our life, and not live in fear every day. We know we’re OK now. But what we went through was f*cking brutal.”

Michael, whose 10th studio album is on the way, also recalled the moment he found out about his son’s cancer diagnosis for the first time: via text just before he was due to perform on BBC One in London. He said Luisana sent him a photo of surgical scan results that showed then-3-year-old Noah had a tumor in his liver. Michael powered through the show and then immediately flew home, where he and Luisana spent seven months in Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with their son. “You don’t get reassurance — you get the opposite,” he explained to the newspaper. “Everything that they tell you is the worst-case scenario.”

Fortunately, the couple, who also share 2-year-old son Elias and are expecting a baby girl, eventually received the best possible news: their little boy was officially cancer free. “This boy is a hero,” Michael added. “He’s my hero.”